Golyad (Russian: голя́дский язык) or East Galindian (Latvian: austrumgalindu valoda, Lithuanian: rytų galindų kalba) is a poorly attested extinct Baltic language of the Dnieper Balts living in the Protva basin in present-day Russia. The Golyad people are believed to have descended from the Moshchiny culture and is the only known ethnonym for the Dnieper-Oka language. Due to there being no known written documents of the Golyad language, the language is poorly known. The language went extinct in the 12th century due to Early Slavic migration and assimilation. It is believed the vernaculars of the Finno-Ugrians and Volga Finns adopted loanwords from East Galindian.
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👉 Golyad language in the context of Baltic languages
The Baltic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively or as a second language by a population of about 6.5–7.0 million people mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Europe. Together with the Slavic languages, they form the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European family.
Scholars usually regard them as a single subgroup divided into two branches: West Baltic (containing only extinct languages) and East Baltic (containing at least two living languages, Lithuanian, Latvian, and by some counts including Latgalian and Samogitian as separate languages rather than dialects of those two). In addition, the existence of the Dnieper-Oka language is hypothesized, with the extinct Golyad language being the only known member. The range of the East Baltic linguistic influence once possibly reached as far as the Ural Mountains, but this hypothesis has been questioned.
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Golyad language in the context of Dnieper-Oka language
The Dnieper-Oka language (Eastern Peripheral Baltic, Dnieper-Baltic) is one or several extinct Baltic languages, the existence of which is indicated by toponymic data. It occupied the upper reaches of the Daugava, the basins of the upper Dnieper and Desna, the upper and middle Oka and the Seym. Beginning in the 7th and 8th centuries, the Baltic dialects of the region were replaced by Old East Slavic. The only known subdivision of the Dnieper-Oka language is the Golyad language.
Golyad language in the context of Galindian language
The term Galindian is sometimes ascribed to two separate Baltic languages, both of which were peripheral dialects:
- a West Baltic language referred to as West Galindian;
- a Baltic language previously spoken in Mozhaysk region (present day Russia), referred to as East Galindian or Golyad